WinRAR - What's new in the latest version


Version 5.61

1. "Delete archive" extraction option deletes all volumes even if user
started extraction from non-first RAR volume, but first volume
is present and all files are unpacked successfully. In such case
previous versions ignored "Delete archive" even if WinRAR was able
to locate the first volume and process the volume set from beginning.

2. Compression ratio bar is not displayed on "Archive" page of
Explorer file properties for archives with encrypted file names.
WinRAR cannot reliably calculate it for such archives without
a password and previously it just displayed 0% here.

3. Bugs fixed:

a) WinRAR displayed "The specified password is incorrect" message
infinitely when attempting to open RAR5 archive with encrypted
file names if wrong global password was set with Ctrl+P;

b) memory management bug in the password dialog could lead to
access to already freed memory followed by crash.
This issue may be also associated with security risks;

c) fixed crashes in corrupt RAR, ACE and LZH archives.
This issue may be also associated with security risks;

d) while starting, WinRAR could cause a brief flickering in menu bars
of few other applications;

e) WinRAR "Find" command matched "String to find" against all
archived files ignoring "File names to find" mask when searching
in CAB archives;

f) SFX module "License" command did not set a title of license window;

g) if "Start-up folder" in WinRAR settings included the trailing
backslash, WinRAR ignored first "Up one level" command.


Version 5.60

1. We updated WinRAR graphics.

We are grateful to http://weirdsgn.com and http://icondesignlab.com
designers participated in this endeavor and proud to announce that
WinRAR uses the new icon set prepared by Aditya Nugraha Putra
from http://weirdsgn.com.

Previous WinRAR icons are available as interface theme here:
https://rarlab.com/themes/WinRAR_Classic_48x36.theme.rar

2. "Repair" command efficiency is improved for recovery record protected
RAR5 archives. Now it can detect deletions and insertions of unlimited
size also as shuffled data including data taken from several recovery
record protected archives and merged into a single file in arbitrary
order.

3. "Turn PC off when done" archiving option is changed to "When done"
drop down list, so you can turn off, hibernate or sleep your PC
after completing archiving.

4. Use -ioff or -ioff1 command line switch to turn PC off,
-ioff2 to hibernate and -ioff3 to sleep your PC after completing
an operation.

5. If encoding of comment file specified in -z<file> switch is not
defined with -sc switch, RAR attempts to detect UTF-8, UTF-16LE
and UTF-16BE encodings based on the byte order mask and data
validity tests.

6. WinRAR attempts to detect ANSI, OEM and UTF-8 encodings of
ZIP archive comments automatically.

7. "Internal viewer/Use DOS encoding" option in "Settings/Viewer"
is replaced with "Internal viewer/Autodetect encoding".
If "Autodetect encoding" is enabled, the internal viewer attempts
to detect ANSI (Windows), OEM (DOS), UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings.

8. Normally Windows Explorer context menu contains only extraction
commands if single archive has been right clicked. You can override
this by specifying one or more space separated masks in "Always display
archiving items for" option in Settings/Integration/Context menu items",
so archiving commands are always displayed for these file types
even if file was recognized as archive. If you wish both archiving
and extraction commands present for all archives, place "*" here.

9. SFX module "SetupCode" command accepts an optional integer parameter
allowing to control mapping of setup program and SFX own error codes.
It is also accessible as "Exit code adjustment" option
in "Advanced SFX options/Setup" dialog.

10. New "Show more information" WinRAR command line -im switch.
It can be used with "t" command to issue a message also in case of
successful archive test result. Without this switch "t" command
completes silently if no errors are found.

This switch is applicable only to WinRAR.exe and ignored by console
RAR.exe.

11. If a wrong password is entered when unpacking an encrypted file
in ZIP archive, WinRAR proposes to enter a valid password
for same file again instead of aborting extraction.

12. If a wrong password is entered when opening or unpacking RAR archive
with encrypted file names, WinRAR proposes to enter a valid password
again instead of aborting the operation. Previous versions already
did so for RAR archives with encrypted file data, but aborted
for archives with file name encryption.

13. WinRAR recognizes GZIP files with arbitrary data preceding
an actual GZIP archive, such as .scexe firmware files.

14. @filelist parameter can be specified in "Files to add" field of
archiving dialog. In this case WinRAR will attempt the list of archiving
files from 'filelist' file, which should be the plain text, one file
name per line.

15. Info dialog:

a) compression ratio graph is updated;

b) "Names and data" is displayed in "Encryption" field for
archives with encrypted file names.

16. Full archive name is displayed if mouse pointer is placed over
an archive name in the operation progress window. It can be useful
if archive name is lengthy and does not fit to available window space.

17. If -ts1 switch is used with -u or -f, file time comparison is performed
with 1 second precision. Previosuly in such case we could wrongly treat
an adding file as newer than archived just because we compared the high
precision adding file time against the low precision archived file time.

18. "Update" and "Fresh" commands ('u' and 'f' in the command line mode)
quit immediately if no files are to be updated. Previously they created
a temporary archive before quitting when updating archives with recovery
record or quick open information.

19. Prompt is issued after creating 500 volumes from WinRAR GUI shell,
so user can continue or quit further archiving. It is done to prevent
creating many thousands of volumes in case of wrongly entered
volume size.

20. WinRAR uses megabytes instead of bytes as default units for volume size
field in the archiving dialog.

21. "Repair" command issues "Recovery record is corrupt" message
after repairing RAR5 archive containing a broken recovery record.
Previously such message was issued only by "Test" command
and "Repair" handled most of recovery record damages silently.

22. Bugs fixed:

a) fixed potential security issues when processing corrupt
RAR archives;

b) non-English characters in TAR files with PAX extended headers
were not displayed correctly;

c) "rar x arcname.rar .." command unpacked files to current folder
instead of its parent;

d) pasting files from Windows Explorer to archive opened in WinRAR
blocked further copy and paste operations in Explorer until
archiving was finished;

e) SFX module issued "The specified password is incorrect" message
infinitely not prompting for correct password once a wrong password
was entered;

f) folders time was always set when extracting ZIP archives even if
"File time" options in the extraction dialog were turned off;

g) if "Delete archive: Always" was selected when extracting
and user pressed "Cancel" in the file overwrite or password prompt,
an archive could be deleted even after cancelling extraction
for .zip and .7z formats.


Version 5.50

1. WinRAR and command line RAR use RAR 5.0 archive format by default.
You can change it to RAR 4.x compatible format with "RAR4" option
in archiving dialog or -ma4 command line switch.

If you prefer RAR 4.x format by default, use "Create default..."
button on "Compression" page of WinRAR settings and set "RAR4"
in the displayed dialog.

This change affects only new clean installs. If you already saved
RAR format in the default compression profile in previous versions,
WinRAR respects stored settings.

2. Use "Set master password" button in "Organize passwords" dialog
to encrypt saved password records and protect them from unauthorized
access.

If saved passwords are protected with master password, you need to
enter the master password and press "OK" in password prompt to access
them. If entered password does not match the master password,
it is treated as a usual password for archive operations.

Once entered, the master password is valid until WinRAR is closed.
Close WinRAR and open it again after specifying the master password
if you wish to see how protection works. Enter a valid and then
empty master password to remove encryption from previously protected
password records.

This WinRAR version uses a new data format for password organizer,
so passwords stored in "Organize passwords" dialog are not readable
by older versions. It does not affect archive encryption formats
and encrypted archives are compatible with previous WinRAR version.
Organizer data is converted to a new format only when you save it
and not immediately after installing WinRAR.

3. Prompt proposing to set the master password is displayed
when storing a password in compression profile. You can enter
the master password to encrypt password data stored in Registry
and protect it from unauthorized access. You will need to enter
the master password in password prompt dialog to access
such compression profile after that.

Once entered, the master password is valid until WinRAR is closed.
Close WinRAR and open it again after specifying the master password
if you wish to see how protection works.

4. By default, WinRAR uses AES-256 in CTR mode to encrypt ZIP archives.
While AES-256 is significantly more secure than ZIP 2.0 legacy
encryption algorithm, it can be incompatible with some older
unzip software. If compatibility with such tools is required,
you can enable "ZIP legacy encryption" option in the password
dialog or use -mezl switch in the command line mode.

5. Added extraction support for .LZ archives created by Lzip compressor.

6. Modern TAR tools can store high precision file times, lengthy
file names and large file sizes in special PAX extended headers
inside of TAR archive. Now WinRAR supports such PAX headers
and uses them when extracting TAR archives.

7. New "Store modification time" option on "Time" page of archiving
dialog can be used to prohibit storing the file modification time
in RAR 5.x archives. Former "High precision modification time"
option is replaced by "High precision time format".

8. New "Full paths in title bar" option in "Settings/General" dialog.
If enabled, the full path of currently opened folder or archive
is displayed in WinRAR title bar.

9. New "File types to open as archives first" option
in "Settings/Compression". Here you can define how Enter
or double click on a file with non-archive extension and archive
contents should be processed in WinRAR file list in file
management mode. Examples of such files are .docx or self-extracting
.exe archives. You can instruct WinRAR either to open such files
as archives first or to execute or open them in associated programs.

Default settings are to open self-extracting exe and to run
other types of archives with non-archive extension.

Regardless of these options, you can always open any such
archive file by pressing Ctrl+PgDn on its name in WinRAR file list.

Default folders for archives and extracted files are moved
from "Settings/Compression" to "Settings/Paths".

10. New "Copy full names to clipboard" command in "File" menu
places full names of selected files to clipboard.

11. Changes in the context menu displayed when right clicking
the file list in WinRAR:

a) several commands, which are also present on the toolbar
or in main menu, such as "View" and "Repair", are removed
from this context menu;

b) "Copy full names to clipboard" command is added;

c) "Run" for executables, "Open in associated application"
for associated files and "Show archive contents" for archives
are added. They allow to choose a way to process SFX archives
and archive files with non-archive extensions.

These items are present only in the file management mode
and are not available inside of archives.

12. LZ and ZIPX are added to list of associations in Settings/Integration
dialog.

13. LZ and ZIPX extensions are added to default list of formats for
-ms switch ("Specify file types to store") invoked without parameters.

14. You can specify 'f' charset value in -sc switch to use UTF-8
encoding. For example:

rar a -scfl arcname @filelist.txt

to read contents of filelist.txt as UTF-8 text.

15. RAR "lt" and "vt" commands display file times with nanosecond
precision. Such precision is used in RAR5 archives created
by RAR/Unix 5.50 and newer. Archives created by WinRAR have 100ns
file time precision.

16. Only '+', '-' and '1' precision modifiers are supported
in -ts switch now. Use '+' to store the file time with maximum
precision, '-' to omit the file time and '1' to store it with
1 second precision. Intermediate precision modes previously
defined with '2' and '3' modifiers are not available in RAR 5.0
archive format and ignored by -ts switch.

17. If a wrong password is entered when unpacking an encrypted file
in RAR5 archive, WinRAR proposes to enter a valid password
for same file again instead of aborting extraction.

18. File path information is displayed if mouse pointer is placed over
a name of archiving file in the operation progress window.

19. Name of currently active compression profile is displayed
in the archiving dialog above "Profiles..." button.

20. If "Find" command is invoked from inside of archive subfolder,
"File names to find" will include the path to this subfolder.
So "Find" will search only starting from this subfolder.

21. Bugs fixed:

a) fixed crashes and security vulnerability when unpacking corrupt
RAR archives;

b) WinRAR failed to unpack files in ZIP archives compressed
with XZ algorithm and encrypted with AES;

c) if "Windows progress bars" option in WinRAR settings was turned off
and "Put each file to separate archive" archiving mode was used,
"gold" part of total progress bar did not display the compressed
data ratio correctly;

d) SFX archive extraction progress was incorrect in case of
multivolume SFX archive with total volume size exceeding 4 GB;

e) if archived folder name included trailing spaces, if user
selected and extracted some folders in non-root archive folder
and if "Allow potentially incompatible names" extraction option
was turned off, WinRAR could lose one or more leading characters
in extracted folder name;

f) if only creation or only last access file time was stored in RAR5
archive with 1 second precision, such as with -ma5 -tsm- -tsa1
switches, this stored time was ignored when extracting.


Version 5.40

1. "Name encoding" submenu in "Options" menu allows to select
encoding for archived file names. This selection affects archive
browsing and extraction commands. You can use Ctrl+E keyboard
shortcut to access this menu quickly.

It can be useful when unpacking an archive without Unicode file names.
For example, unpacking a zip file with Chinese archived names
in Windows with Russian specified as a language for non-Unicode
programs.

2. If RAR recovery volumes (.rev files) are present in the same folder
as usual RAR volumes, archive test command verifies .rev contents
after completing testing .rar files.

If you wish to test only .rev files without checking .rar volumes,
you can select .rev files in WinRAR file list and apply "Test"
only to them or run:

rar t arcname.part1.rev

in the command line.

3. While NTFS file system permits file names with trailing spaces
and dots, a lot of Windows programs fail to process such names
correctly. If "Allow potentially incompatible names" option
in "Advanced" page of extraction dialog is turned off, WinRAR removes
trailing spaces and dots, if any, from file names when extracting.

This option is turned off by default.

Command line RAR also removes trailing spaces and dots when extracting
unless -oni switch is specified.

4. Previously "Synchronize archive contents" update mode
(-as command line switch) aborted if some of archiving folders
could not be read. Now WinRAR continues performing the operation
and preserves archived files matching unreadable folders.

5. WinRAR Shift+Del delete command can be used to delete folders
containing non-standard file names with trailing spaces and dots.
Usual delete to Recycle Bin also as Shift+Del in previous WinRAR
versions cannot delete such folders.

Unlike Del command, Shift+Del removes files permanently,
they are not moved to Recycle Bin. No additional prompts are issued
for files with read-only and system attributes.

6. You can drag folders from folder tree panel and drop them to
other programs or Desktop to copy or unpack them. Drag the archive
icon in tree panel root to unpack the entire archive.

7. "New folder" button in extraction dialog proposes a new folder name
based on archive name instead of generic "New Folder".

8. Command line RAR version information:

a) if -iver switch is specified, RAR displays the version number
and quits. You can run just "RAR -iver";

b) "x86" or "x64" is displayed in Windows RAR version information
both for -iver and in the copyright title for other commands.

9. If -p switch is used without optional <pwd> parameter,
a password can be also set with file redirection or pipe.

For example: rar -p myarc.rar myfiles < psw.txt

10. Command line RAR treats 'arcname.partN' as 'arcname.partN.rar'
if 'arcname.partN' does not exist and 'arcname.part#.rar' exists.

For example, it is allowed to run:

RAR x arcname.part01

to start extraction from arcname.part01.rar

11. Improvements in 7z archives support:

a) "Solid" status is correctly detected and reported for 7z archives
in WinRAR "Info" command;

b) dictionary size is displayed for LZMA and LZMA2 7z archives
in WinRAR "Info" command;

c) unknown packed size for files inside of 7z solid block is denoted
as '?' instead of '0' when browsing the archive contents in WinRAR.

12. Maximum comment length for RAR archives is increased from 64 to 256 KB.

Since SFX script commands are stored in archive comment,
it allows a longer main and license text in SFX archives.

13. Size of default WinRAR viewer font is scaled up properly
in Windows high DPI mode.

14. Switch -scul can be used to process big endian UTF-16 list files
as well, provided that they have a correct byte order mark.
Previously it allowed only little endian file lists.

15. Minimum supported Windows version is Windows XP SP3 now.
WinRAR will not run in Windows XP without service packs.

16. "Settings/File list/Allow all uppercase names" option is removed.
This option was intended to simplify transition from MS DOS to
Windows and is not needed anymore.

17. Bugs fixed:

a) WinRAR 5.31 x64 "Compress and email" command did not work
with Microsoft Outlook x64;

b) if WinRAR 5.31 version for one of right to left languages
was installed in Windows with English or other not right to
left system language, WinRAR could change Windows Explorer
layout to right to left;

c) if archive was stored in a folder without "Write" permission
and if archive contents was extracted with drag and drop to
a writable folder, WinRAR issued an unnecessary privileges
elevation prompt.


Version 5.31

1. Following issues are corrected in Windows high DPI mode:

a) if text size in Windows settings was set to 150% or larger,
the font size in WinRAR help was not increased accordingly,
resulting in too small text;

b) default columns width in WinRAR file list was less
than expected for 125% or larger Windows text setting.

2. Interface improvements for right to left languages:

a) proper text alignment in simple WinRAR prompts, such as
confirmations to delete archived files or to clear the log file;

b) "OK", "Cancel", "Help" buttons in multi-page dialogs,
such as archiving and extraction options or WinRAR settings,
are aligned correctly and translated to default Windows
display language.

3. Bugs fixed:

a) WinRAR SFX module could load DLL libraries from its own executable
folder as a result of calling some Windows API functions.
It could lead to security threat if DLL files with malicious code
were stored in the same folder as SFX archive. Now SFX module
takes additional steps to prevent such situation in Windows Vista
and newer.

Be aware that users without latest Windows security patches
installed also as Windows XP users still can be affected,
so they must be especially careful to run SFX archive from
a folder without suspicious DLL files;

b) WinRAR 5.30 failed to run .lnk files from file list.


Version 5.30

1. Information about the critical vulnerability in WinRAR self-extracting
archives published in news in September and October 2015 is incorrect.
Unfortunately mass media failed to recognize that what was described
as WinRAR vulnerability is Windows OLE vulnerability patched
in November 2014:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms14-064.aspx

Even if unpatched, this Windows OLE vulnerability does not introduce
new risk factors for WinRAR SFX archives.

Please read http://rarlab.com/vuln_sfx_html2.htm for more details.

No patches for WinRAR are needed.

2. Added extraction of multipart ZIP archives created by 7-Zip.
Such archives have .zip.001, .zip.002, ... file extensions.
You need to open .zip.001 file in WinRAR shell to browse
or unpack such archive. All parts must be stored in the same folder
before starting extraction.

3. Added extraction of files split to multiple parts with .001,
.002, ..., extensions. You can open .001 file as a usual archive
and then unpack its contents. WinRAR will combine all parts
and save them to extracted file. All parts must be stored
in the same folder before starting extraction.

"001" item is included to "Associate WinRAR with" list
in "Settings/Integration" dialog.

4. WinRAR file list allows to use mouse Back and Forward buttons
or Alt+Left and Alt+Right keyboard shortcuts to navigate
in recently visited folders.

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